Enabling stewardship, assurance, and responsible innovation in the use of AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is already changing how school trusts work. Staff are using it to create resources, draft communications, analyse information, support administrative tasks, and reduce workload. Pupils are encountering it both within education and beyond it. Suppliers are embedding AI into products that trusts already use, often without organisations actively seeking it out. The question for boards is no longer whether AI will affect their organisation, but whether its use is being governed effectively.
AI is not simply a technology issue. It is a governance issue because it affects how decisions are made, how information is produced, how risks are managed, how staff work, how pupils learn, how public money is spent, and how trust is maintained with stakeholders.
Its impact is shaped through thousands of decisions about how work is organised, how technology is deployed, how people are supported, and how benefits are shared. Those decisions are all governance decisions. They are ultimately matters of leadership, stewardship, and accountability.
The Department for Education recognises that AI has significant potential to reduce administrative burdens, support teaching and learning, and improve efficiency. At the same time, it highlights important risks relating to safeguarding, data protection, intellectual property, misinformation, bias, and inappropriate use. Its current generative AI product safety standards also address security, cognitive development, emotional and social development, mental health, and manipulation.
The challenge for boards is not choosing between innovation and caution. It is ensuring that innovation is pursued in a way that is safe, ethical, evidence-informed, and aligned with the trust’s charitable objects.
